Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

“Anything you say, boss.”

Neither said anything for a moment then, and there was just the sound of the wind high in the trees and the tiny waves lapping against the shore and Toby Roebuck returning through the camp, all of its windows now streaming yellow and illuminating the treacherous footing between where they stood and the camp’s back porch.

“Well, I guess it’s true,” Peter observed. “Life is full of surprises. Who’d have thought you and I would ever argue over a woman?”

Sully stared at his son, whose eyes gleamed in the darkness like a cat’s. “Is that what you think we’re doing?”

Toby bounced back out onto the porch then and peered up the embankment toward her two male companions, who remained invisible in the dark midground between the light from above and that from below. She could see neither of them, though when Peter spoke, his voice was close enough to touch. “That’s what I think we’re doing,” she heard him say.

The job took about an hour, and in the end Sully let Peter and Toby Roebuck do most of the hauling up and down the bank. Even with the camp’s back door light on, the slope remained dark, the footing treacherous, and so Sully stayed with the truck, pulling the now tangled boards free and leaning them against the tailgate so Toby and his son could grab a convenient armful. Watching them work together, he decided that Peter had been right. They were arguing about a woman. He also had to admit that he was jealous of his son’s two good legs. Of course, Peter himself had to be a good ten years older than Toby Roebuck, and he too seemed slightly in awe of her energy going up and down the bank with an armful of hardwood. Peter went slower, carrying a far larger load over his shoulder.

They’d decided the best place to stack the wood was on the screened-in porch that wrapped around the camp, and once when Toby, who was making two bouncing trips to Peter’s one, caught up with him there on the porch, they took a short break. Sully could hear their voices borne up from the lake on the frigid wind, and once he heard Toby Roebuck laugh, a sound that made him wish Rub had come along. Rub would have been full of angry wishes. He’d have wanted to know how come guys like Peter and Carl had all the luck with women while they never had any. He’d have wished all this running up and down the hill would make ole Toby hot and sweaty so she’d take off her jacket and let them watch her tits jiggle. When Sully pointed out it was December and about ten degrees above zero, Rub would just wish it was summer. Rub’s wishes, when you totaled them up, meant simply that he’d have preferred a different sort of world, one where he got his share — of money, pussy, food, warmth, ease. Sully’s job, as he perceived it, was to defend the world they were stuck with, a task made infinitely easier by Rub’s presence.

In his absence, Sully, sitting on the tailgate of the pickup waiting for his son and the prettiest girl in Bath to climb the bank for the last few armloads of wood, found himself alone with a few wishes of his own. He didn’t waste much time on the big ones — that he was younger, less stubborn, more flexible, less in debt, more careful. He concentrated instead on the more specific and immediate things that had at one time been within the sphere of his influence to effect, or, failing that, were statistically probable. He wished he hadn’t tried to climb down the bank in the dark, causing his knee to scream at him now in protest. He wished that he and Ruth weren’t on the outs, because he would have enjoyed her company tonight, just as he always did after he’d done something foolish, as if she possessed the power of absolution. She’d tell him there was a new Sully, not just the old one, and he’d be free to choose between believing and resenting her. He also wished that he hadn’t been quite so mean to Rub, whom he’d now have to cajole into coming back to work, that he hadn’t assaulted a policeman in broad daylight on Main Street, that it would start snowing so he could make some money, that the bitter wind would stop blowing long enough for him to light a cigarette. Since a couple of these were in the nature of specific regrets of the sort he disliked indulging, he decided he’d write them all off as bad debts if he could just get a cigarette lit. And this was what he was attempting to do when a set of headlights cut through the trees some distance away and he became aware of the sound of a small car engine whining closer, which could mean only one thing. In another minute Carl Roebuck’s Camaro careened into view and skidded to a halt about a foot from where Sully sat on the tailgate.

“Don Sullivan,” Carl said, getting out. Even in the dark Sully could see he was grinning. “Fugitive.”

“I’m not running, I’m working,” Sully explained, flicking the useless match away. “If you’d ever worked a day in your life you’d know the difference.”

“How come every time I see you, you’re sitting on that tailgate and claiming to be working?” Carl said, pulling out his lighter and cupping his hand around it.

Sully’s cigarette caught just as the wind blew out the flame. “I’m too tired to explain.”

“Well,” Carl said, locating Sully’s cigarettes in his shirt pocket and extracting one from the pack, “I have a feeling you’re going to get a few days off at county expense.”

“Nah.” Sully exhaled through his nose. “I’ve got the best one-legged Jewish lawyer in Bath.”

“That reminds me,” Carl said, inhaling his own cigarette rapturously. “Wirf said to give you this.”

“This” was a cocktail napkin. Sully unfolded and read the message Wirf had scrawled there by the light of Carl’s left head lamp. “Verily,” the note said, “this Time Thou Art Truly and Forever Fucked.”

Sully wadded up the napkin and gave it a toss. “He puts up a smooth defense, doesn’t he?”

“I’d like to see him on the Supreme Court. Legal opinions on cocktail napkins. What the hell ever possessed you to punch a cop?”

“It seemed like a hell of a fine idea at the time.” Sully sighed, then provided a short version of what had happened.

Carl was skeptical. “He drew his gun on you?”

“Pointed it at me too, the prick.”

“I don’t think anybody’d believe that unless you had a witness.”

“If there weren’t any witnesses, then I didn’t punch him,” Sully said. “My son was there, though.”

“That’s something, I suppose,” Carl said, “though it’d be better to have the sort of witness who wouldn’t lie to save you.”

“I don’t think he would, actually,” Sully admitted.

“An honorable man, huh?”

“I don’t know about that,” Sully said. “I just don’t think he likes me well enough to lie for me.”

Carl took a thoughtful drag on his cigarette. “You know why this is happening, don’t you?”

It occurred to Sully when Carl said this that Carl was seriously pissed. Which meant they were on the verge of a real argument. After the last one, Sully hadn’t spoken to him for four months. “Because I’m so lucky?”

“Bullshit,” Carl said. “You know why these things keep happening to you. It’s because you have to rag everybody twenty-four hours a day. It’s because you never, ever fucking let up.”

“Oh,” Sully said. “That’s why.”

“Why were you driving up the sidewalk, Sully?” Carl persisted. “You ragged Rub until even he couldn’t stand it any more, and you still couldn’t let it alone. You had to make it worse. You had to completely humiliate that poor simple little fuck.”

“I don’t believe I’m hearing this from you,” Sully said. “When have you ever done anything but insult him?”